But having said that, I want to argue further that (A) sincere beliefs can be wrong: the TSA is demonstrably failing to keep weapons off planes and failing to identify terrorists, and (B) measures taken to improve safety frequently backfire and either cancel out or in fact increase the risks they are supposed to address, and the TSA is a textbook case.

It’s entirely possible to accept these two statements simultaneously: the TSA has only the best intentions when it searches passengers, and the TSA should be immediately disbanded or at least severely restricted in what it can do to innocent travelers.

"Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual, and putting terror in every heart." -Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, 1949

*2015 UPDATE: Still no word from TSA on public comments* The public comment period on the TSA's electronic strip-search scanners and "pat-downs" closed on June 25, 2013. That public comment period had been ordered by the courts, an order the TSA ignored for almost two years before it finally complied. The agency must issue a report on the many thousands (or more?) of comments it received. Yet here it is 2015 and still no report. If the TSA ever complies with the requirement to issue that report, we'll let you know.

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